Hospitality design in Côte d’Ivoire asks for the same things a good hotel or restaurant needs anywhere: shade, a clear route for the guest, materials that hold up, and a story that belongs to the place. From our studio in Dubai Design District, IAIA has designed three hospitality projects in the country: two boutique hotels — one in Yamoussoukro that won at the DNA Paris Design Awards 2025, and one in Abidjan — and a restaurant renovation in Abidjan. This article sets out what each one taught us.
We have practised interior architecture since 1994, mostly in the UAE. Working in West Africa did not mean leaving that experience behind. The climate is different — humid rather than dry — but the questions are familiar: where the sun falls, how guests move, what the walls are made of, and what the place should feel like after dark.
Hotel design in Yamoussoukro: Villa Yakro Hotel
Villa Yakro Hotel is an 18,000 m² boutique hotel in Yamoussoukro, planned as a low village of earth-toned volumes around a long central pool. Our line for it is simple: earth walls around a garden of water.
The architecture is the climate strategy. Thick rendered walls, deep overhangs and timber louvres keep the rooms shaded. Perforated clay screens filter light into the stairs and terraces, and the same screen carries the hotel’s name at the entrance, so arrival and shading are one gesture.
Every guest room opens onto the water, with its own terrace and planting. Shared life gathers at the edges of the pool: a cascade wall, sunken lounges, a shaded bar under a timber pergola, and covered decks with woven pendants. The landscape was developed with Urbanforms.
The material palette is short on purpose — clay render, clay screen, timber deck and water — because a hotel that reads as one place is easier to remember than one that tries to say everything. The project is ongoing. In 2025 it was named Winner in Architecture / Hospitality at the DNA Paris Design Awards, entered as Yakro Hotel & Resort. The full list of the studio’s recognitions is on our awards page.
Boutique hotel interior design in Abidjan: Palais WIA
Palais WIA is a boutique hotel on the Boulevard des Martyrs in Cocody, Abidjan, set among gardens of palms and lawn. Where Villa Yakro is about architecture and landscape, Palais WIA is about interiors — and about narrative. Our idea for it was a hotel of rooms that tell stories.
The interiors draw on African and Ivorian culture through shapes, artefacts and craft. The suites are thematic: each is dedicated to a leadership figure who shaped Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire or the continent, and carries that figure’s character into the room. Each suite has its own lounge and dining room, furnished differently from the next.
The guest’s route is planned as a sequence: the white villa in the gardens, a lobby that opens into lounges divided by carved fretwork screens over inlaid stone floors, then the bar and a set of private dining rooms, and finally the suites.
Materials change with the mood of each room. Bevelled mirror in a lattice lines the private dining rooms and multiplies the light of the chandeliers. Dark lacquer with fine brass lines wraps the bedrooms, softened by fretwork rugs that repeat the patterns of the lobby screens. Grey vein-cut stone gives the bathrooms a calm, continuous surface. Palais WIA was a Finalist in Hotel Bedroom & Suites Design at the SBID International Design Awards 2023.
Restaurant interior design in Abidjan: Nama
Nama Abidjan is a restaurant and bar renovation. Nama serves Nikkei cuisine, where Japanese technique meets the landscape of Peru, and the interior takes its cue from the same dialogue. The concept board set terraced Andean fields, a mountain ridge glowing at dusk and wind-drawn sand side by side; the line we kept was the Andes at dusk, lit from within.
A ridge-line landscape, painted onto gridded panels and lit from behind, wraps the dining room like a horizon. The bar counter is backlit onyx, its veining read as strata. Woven cylindrical columns filter light into the seating, and brass pendants shaped like folded leaves arc over the tables. Below a slatted walnut ceiling, rust-toned banquettes, patterned chairs and small amber lamps divide the floor into booths without closing it off.
A restaurant is used mostly at night, so the design is really a lighting design. At Nama the light stays low and warm, and almost every surface that matters — the onyx, the painted panels, the amber glass — is lit from behind rather than from above. More on how we approach restaurants is on our restaurant interior design page.
What hospitality design in West Africa shares with Dubai
Three lessons carry across the three projects, and they apply as much in the Gulf as in Côte d’Ivoire.
- Shade is designed, not added. At Villa Yakro the walls, overhangs, louvres and clay screens do the work before any interior decision is made. We take the same approach to villas in the UAE — see designing a villa for Dubai’s light and heat.
- The guest’s route is the plan. Palais WIA reads as a sequence from garden to suite; each room prepares the next.
- Identity comes from the place and the brief. Ivorian culture and craft at Palais WIA, earth and water at Villa Yakro, a Peruvian-Japanese menu at Nama — none of them borrows a style from elsewhere.
For our work on hotels and restaurants closer to home, read hospitality interior design in Dubai, or see the architectural side of our practice on architectural consultancy.
FAQ: hospitality design in Côte d’Ivoire
Does IAIA design hotels and restaurants outside the UAE?
Yes. Alongside our work in the UAE, we have designed Villa Yakro Hotel in Yamoussoukro, Palais WIA in Abidjan and Nama Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire. All three are on our work page.
What award did Villa Yakro Hotel win?
It was named Winner in Architecture / Hospitality at the DNA Paris Design Awards 2025. Palais WIA was a Finalist in Hotel Bedroom & Suites Design at the SBID International Design Awards 2023.
How do you design a hotel for a hot, humid climate?
Start with the building, not the furniture. At Villa Yakro, thick rendered walls, deep overhangs, timber louvres and perforated clay screens shade the rooms and terraces, and the guest rooms open onto water and planting.
Can a restaurant renovation change the identity of a space?
Yes, when the concept comes from the menu. Nama’s renovation translates Nikkei cuisine into a room of backlit onyx, walnut, amber glass and a painted Andean horizon.
How do we start a hospitality project with IAIA?
Send us the brief, the site and any drawings you have through our contact page, and we will arrange a call.
Planning a hotel or restaurant in Africa or the Gulf?
IDEA ART Interior Architects has worked from Dubai since 1994 and is based in Dubai Design District, Building 5, A204. If you are planning a hotel or restaurant, in Côte d’Ivoire or closer to home, we would be glad to talk it through.
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